All posts tagged ‘Halloween costumes’

National Halloween Costume Swap Day is coming! Image: Green Halloween.

Halloween is approaching fast. In just a few weeks, your home will be inundated with pumpkins, vampire teeth and miniature versions of your favorite candy bars. Best holiday ever! It also means that you should probably start thinking about pulling together those costumes.

This weekend is National Halloween Costume Swap Day. The nationwide event is just what it sounds like. All you need to do is find an event in your area, bring a costume, and get ready for some swapping.

I never knew there was such a day, but I’m all for it. As parents, we don’t seem to want to spend a lot of money on clothes for school, sports or special occasions. However, when it comes to dressing up like a superhero, a fairy or a furry creature, some of us throw that budget right out the window.

In case it escaped anyone’s notice, Halloween is fast approaching. In my house that means daily conversations about costume ideas, creating a plan of attack for trick-or-treating, and, well, it’s pretty much just those two things. My daughter is six years old, and like other kids her age (or any age, kids being kids and all); she knows exactly what she wants. She is going to be a mummy. This marks a first for both of us; it is her first time being something scary and my first time designing something scary. Clearly, we are going to agree on everything!

In years past my dear daughter has looked into her dress-up box and picked something she already owns. For the record, I think this is very decent of her. We have been participants her whole life at faerie festivals around the U.S., and my mom is rather clever with a sewing machine, so there’s always been something neat on hand and I just flesh it out by adding small details and accessories. She was a faerie when she was two, Captain Feathersword when she was three (I did do a lot of the work on that one, now that I think of it), Cinderella when she was four, and when she was five she was, on different nights, a cat, an astronaut, and the princess Belle. We had a lot of ground to cover that year, so in addition to needing extra safety tips, we needed the extra costumes.

But this year she wants to go scary. Back and forth she went between vampire and mummy before finally settling on the more mindless of the cursed creatures, and then the ball was in my court as to how to best bring this creature to life, so to speak. I’ve been thinking about bandages vs. muslin, various wrapping techniques (too loose and it’s sloppy, too tight and it just looks like she’s in traction), whether or not I should tea-stain the material first or just make it look dirty with dusting powder after it’s on her, and on and on. I’ve even been thinking about which herbs I’ll need to tuck into the wrappings around her stomach, you know, for authenticity. I’m going with Marjoram. Just to be sure, because she has been known to change her mind, I asked her earlier this week what she wants to be for Halloween and she said she still wants to be a mummy. Cool. Then she said, “I’ll need a roll of toilet paper.”

Toilet paper? Really?

And now I’m not sure if she has really low expectations or if I am overthinking this whole project. To be fair, we run into these differences in approach somewhat often. Usually I see this in regards to school work or family obligations, to simply getting dressed in the morning (for the love of all that is holy, pick out some socks!), though I believe it could be anything.

The truth is we are at our best together when we meet in the middle, somewhere between the carefully dried fragrant herbs and the Charmin, between the thing that will last forever and the thing that will only last until the next rainfall. The middle path, the path of wisdom, in Buddhism, comes up again and again as I parent this child, when I am too tight and she is too loose, or the other way around, and so we tune our proverbial lute and come into harmony through willing compromise.

So I don’t say that I am wrong to put a lot of thought into her costume. Nor is she incorrect in her desire to make it easy. Because by Halloween we’ll have it done, together, and we’ll both be happy, just like we always are.

This time Nicole is joined by Corrina Lawson, GeekMom editor, and Amy Kraft, GeekMom core contributor, to talk about the fun of making unique Halloween costumes and our personal strategies for snagging the best treats. They also discuss the DC reboot and how the portrayal of superheroes is important for our kids. Lastly, big book announcements for the site and for Corrina. Questions? Thoughts? Suggestions? Email us podcast@geekmom.com

It’s probably too late for this Halloween, unless you’re a REALLY fast knitter, but here’s a great Doctor Who scarf made by two friends of mine, Tara and Leah Moore.

It took the sisters, 16 and 19, several months to put together, using the precise pattern of colors in the scarf worn by the most famous of all the Doctors, Tom Baker. Although according to The Doctor Who Scarf website where the girls found the pattern, there were several incarnations of the scarf, which started out with a length of 20 feet but got progressively shorter. The version seen here is topped out at 14 feet 2 inches long!

Tara will be wearing it for Halloween, while Leah is on a visit to England. Leah’s not sure if there will be trick or treating over there, but she’s hoping to make her money last long enough to squeeze in a visit to the Doctor Who Experience.

Last week I was browsing one of those pop-up Halloween stores in what was probably an abandoned Borders with a friend who apparently hasn’t tried to purchase a Halloween costume in some time. Our conversation mirrored the scene in a Duane Reade in the Sex and the City movie:

Miranda: The only two choices for women: witch and sexy kitten.
Carrie : You just said a mouthful there, sister.

It gets worse every year, and the sizes of the Sexy Fill-In-The-Blank costumes are drifting down into the sizes for girls of an age that should never be described as sexy. Although I always make my kids’ costumes, we do like to wander the Halloween stores for inspiration. My son was faced with massive walls of choices: gobs of superhoes, movie heroes and villains, cartoon characters, and more. All my daughter wanted was to see what they offered in Star Wars costumes for girls. The answer? Not one. And not due to lack of selection. Here’s a portion of the wall of Star Wars costumes:

Wall of Star Wars costumes. Not one girl. Photo credit: Ruth Suehle

If you’re an adult woman, it’s worse. In the aforementioned trip with a friend to a different Halloween store, I had a hard time finding any costume for a woman that wasn’t a sexed-up version of the character. If you actually want to look like a character, you can forget it.

But there are two solutions. One, if sexy kitten/policewoman/fairy is your thing, then go right ahead. I decided to be She-Ra this year for our 80s-themed party. She-Ra happens to wear a strapless white dress and knee-high gold boots. Of course, it turns out that even She-Ra can be sexed up–when searching for images to base my pattern on, I kept coming across one that mainly consisted of fishnets, a garter belt, and a bustier.

We love Halloween. We really love Halloween. We think it’s cool that there’s one day a year when people can dress up as anything they want. What we don’t think is cool is that increasingly women are only supposed to dress up as one thing: “Sexy _____” (fill in the blank).

And their advice:

Celebrate your heritage. North America is full of people from every single part of the world. But no matter where we’re from, we all have amazing queens, heroines, and goddesses in our cultural backgrounds.

Channel the goddess. It’s a great way to explore the female divine—or just wear an awesome costume. (Use care if you’re stepping outside your own heritage.)

Be Queen for a Day. To heck with princesses. Be a queen.

Honor your personal heroine. Who inspires you? Who fascinates you?

Try on some red carpet glamour. Dressing to the nines is fun. When else do you get to wear elbow length gloves and feather boas? Unless you’re a movie star in real life, Halloween is your chance.

My plan for She-Ra was to have a Dragon*Con costume already ready next year that didn’t involve underwear from another century and ten layers of fabric in the Atlanta heat. But I love the idea of choosing historic figures–particularly a gigantic queen gown. And who doesn’t love a good feather boa?

My kids, for what it’s worth, teamed up and chose Mario and Princess Peach. Regular Princess Peach, in a gown so puffy, it took five yards of fabric to make in the four-year-old size.

I think the result was great, and you could easily make it in grown-up size for yourself. Although the instructions look long, I promise I did it in an hour, including figuring out the math, which now I’ve done for you!

Materials

Fabric (we’ll figure out how much in a moment)

A spool of ribbon (doesn’t matter what kind since it won’t show)

1″ wide elastic for the waistband

A little math for the fabric

To figure out how much fabric you need, take your waist measurement, add 10, and divide by 2. That is the absolute minimum length, but since you probably don’t want a straight skirt, you’re going to need more. Estimate the bottom width of the skirt you want (try measuring one you have and like), add 5, and divide by 2.

For a little girl, you can do it with 45″ wide fabric. For an adult, you’ll either need 60″ wide fabric, or you’ll need the full length of your bottom measurement instead of half of it. It also never hurts to add a few inches to spare.

Example:

My daughter has a 20″ waist. The bottom of the skirt is almost 44″ around (subtracting a bit for seams). That means I took 44/2″ (22″) of 45″ wide fabric, still folded with selvages together, and folded it in half again by bringing the cut ends together, like this:

The five inches added to the bottom measurement are important only if you’re serious about your finished circumference–they give you a 5/8″ seam allowance. The ten inches added to the waist give you the seam allowance as well as room to stretch the elastic. Those inches you need.

You’ll also notice my outline of where to cut is beaker-shaped. The top 2.5″ should be straight so that you can make a casing for the elastic.

Making the skirt

1. This doesn’t have to be scientifically drawn out and cut unless you’re especially nervous or very concerned about precise measurements. Make sure the top will be wide enough, then cut the two angles following the shape in the image above. That’s it.

2. Now you’ve got four pieces. Sew them all together, and now you’ve got something that looks like a skirt! If you have a serger, this is a good time to finish all the edges.

3. Add the elastic waistband. There are several ways of doing it, so feel free to do it however you’re familiar with. But if you don’t know where to start or want a fast way to handle this for a seldom-worn costume, see my instructions below for a quick casing waistband.

4. Hem the skirt. If your selvage is interesting–perhaps it has a frayed look you like–you could use it as the bottom edge when you cut and skip this step.

5. Decide how many spots you want bustled. Multiply that number times 8. Now cut that many pieces of ribbon in 5″ lengths. My daughter’s had four bustles, which meant 32 pieces of 5″ long ribbons.

6. Pin up one of the seams to see how you want the bustles to fall. Where two spots come together, sew a ribbon. Measure how far apart they were, and duplicate it along each of the four seams. In this case, I had eight ribbons along each seam.

7. Tie together pairs of neighboring ribbons, and your skirt is ready to wear.

Inside out finished skirt with ribbons tied

Quick casing waistband

This is also a useful waistband for children’s pants. If you always put the hole for the elastic at the center back seam, they always know which direction to put their pants on.

1. Fold down the top of the skirt 1.25″ and pin all the way around. (Remember–that’s why you cut the beaker shape.)

2. Start about an inch away from one of the seams and sew all the way around the circle, stopping about an inch from that same seam on the other side. I sew along the top of the serging as a guide, but if you don’t have a serger, you may need to allow more and fold the edges under to keep them from ravelling.

3. Attach a safety pin to one end of the elastic, run it through your casing, and sew the ends of the elastic together, overlapping it about an inch.

Variation

You can tie the ribbons in different pairs to make one seam higher over a knee, for example. You can also untie the ribbons in back for a skirt that’s short in the front and long in the back. Or you have the option when the mood strikes to untie all of the ribbons for a long skirt all around–that’s the benefit of bustling with ribbons rather than sewing it down.

Try putting the ribbons on the outside for a skirt full of bows. Watch out for shape and color combinations though–you may risk looking like a Christmas tree.

Make more than four panels for a fancier or fuller skirt. This is especially a good idea if you’re going to have a wide-bottomed skirt. Remember to adjust the math accordingly.

My son has been obsessed with the Beatles since toddlerhood. When he was in first grade, he asked a hairstylist to give him “Paul McCartney circa 1965.” She promptly fled the scene and swapped clients with the stylist at the next chair, but we celebrate his Beatles-geek devotion. That’s what led us to create this Sgt. Pepper costume, which rivals holey-sheet ghost as the world’s easiest (and cheapest) DIY costume.

All it takes is a sold-color thrift-store nightgown (vigorously laundered, natch), sunglasses and Mardi Gras beads from the dollar store, and some ribbon from the craft store. We used cardboard for the epaulets and hot glued the ribbon and fringe on.

I’m a geek. You’ve probably noticed that by now. But my geekery extends into my many hobbies, and perhaps none so obviously as my sewing hobby. You see, when I wanted to learn how to sew it wasn’t because I wanted to make shirts or quilts or skirts. No, I wanted to make a Renaissance-style corset. This was my first sewing project as an adult.

A closer look at the corset. Vive la tartan!

Thankfully, six years ago when I decided to undertake this initial project, the internet gave me plenty of ideas and patterns. That corset somehow lost its way in my last move, however, and as our family was planning a trip to the Carolina Renaissance Faire, I needed to be, you know, prepared. (I am not the kind of gal who can go to an event without a costume.)

Thing is, money’s an issue. And busks and boning — the structure of what makes up a corset — are really expensive. (Not to mention this was the night before the actual event.) I made a quick trip to Hancock Fabric to see if there was anything I could use in lieu of boning; I found some plastic stuff for $3.49/yard, but that wasn’t going to cut it. I needed over 12 yards for the project.

While perusing the art supplies at Jerry’s Artarama, I came across some bamboo brush mats. I had two of those, in my kitchen, that I use as placemats. And I remembered that corsets were often strengthened with dried reeds in the Renaissance, especially when whale boning wasn’t available.

Well, isn’t bamboo essentially just that? I figured it’d do the trick.

Since I had all the material I needed (canvas and a corset fabric for the cover — that tartan you see over there) I purchased just a handful of items: grommets for the lacing and ribbon for finishing. It ended up at about $9.00. Then, following the custom design and directions, I cut the bamboo as needed and inserted them in the channels. (If you’re looking for something similar to the placemat, make sure it’s composed of bamboo shoots — some mats have cut-up bamboo, or it’s too thick — and cut apart the string that keeps them together. Then you’ll have dozens of long, flexible pieces of bamboo.)

I had thin bamboo pieces, and I slid those in four at a time; this meant even more support. I even had some thick, flat bamboo pieces I used in lieu of busks that worked marvelously well.

After sewing everything together, the whole process taking about four hours from top to bottom, I was impressed with the strength of the bamboo. And the next day, I wore the corset for over ten hours. I even drove to the Faire in it, and had no problems holding up. It’s serious support!

You can purchase bamboo mats for under $6.00 at art supply stores or anywhere that sells bamboo placemats. Just make sure they’re a little longer than you require. For a Renaissance style corset, the length is just about perfect in a standard placemat. I only had to trim about half an inch off of some of them. Be sure to have a good idea of your design before you go buying, though.

My total cost came to a little over $15 (considering what I spent on the materials; the tartan was .49 cents at Goodwill, and the canvas — of which I used only a small portion of — was $9.00). That’s significantly less than the $150-$375 I saw on price tags at the Faire, forsooth!

Is it the eleventh hour and you still have no costume for the kiddos? No worries! Those brown bags from the grocery store come in handy for all kinds of things, but this time of year they’re the go-to material for last-minute Halloween costumes. You can have any of these costumes ready to wear in less than 24 hours, but some will take no more than an hour or two.

First, you’ll need to know how to create a paper bag vest. With the opening of the bag facing you, cut up the middle of the bag and over the fold at the bag’s bottom. Cut a 6-8” hole in the bottom of the bag for the neck. Cut 4-6” holes in each side for the armholes. Carefully turn the vest inside out so that the store logo is on the inside, and you’re ready for transformation. If you plan to paint the bag, you’ll want to do that the day before you plan to decorate it.

Here are ten quick and easy paper bag costumes to get you started:

1. Fisherman: Trim the vest so that the front edges are rounded (see photo). Glue on an assortment of old fishing gear, like lures, bobbers, and flies.

Wear with: Jeans, a flannel shirt, and a funky hat.

Accessorize: Carry a fishing pole.

2. Cowboy: Fringe the bottom of the vest and glue on “pockets” cut from a second paper bag.

Wear with: Jeans, a flannel shirt, a bandana, and a straw hat.

Accessorize: Tie on a rope.

3. Robot: Paint the paper bag vest silver and add a control panel with miscellaneous parts from the toolbox like washers and springs or old computer components.

Wear with: Grey sweats and a grey sweatshirt.

Accessorize: Make a robot head out of a small square box that fits over your child’s head.

Accessorize: Slip on antennae from the dress up box and carry a silk flower.

9. Caveman: Wad up the vest and then smooth it flat. Repeat 5-10 times, until the bag becomes supple and resembles leather. Cut the bottom of the vest into jagged ‘V’ shapes. Paint to resemble an animal print if you’d like.

Wear with: Tan leggings or sweats.

Accessorize: Cover a small baseball bat with brown paper from another bag so that it resembles a club.